"The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of
God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable
and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of
worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the
goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from
dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery
from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed
with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he
continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in
exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the
Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her
sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they
dispense with the women of flesh and blood. The more they emphasised in
their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent
became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped
in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God.
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